A recent advance in the field of photography is the development digital cameras. The optical system works the same as in film cameras, typically using a lens with a variable diaphragm to focus light onto an image pickup device. The diaphragm and shutter admit the correct amount of light to the imager, just as with film but the image pickup device is electronic an electronic image sensor rather than a photosensitive chemically-treated film. Many compact digital still cameras can record sound and moving video as well as still photographs. Digital cameras have many capabilities that film cameras do not. For example, digital cameras can display images on a screen immediately after they are recorded, store thousands of images on a single small electronic memory device, record video with sound, and delete images to free storage space. Some digital cameras can crop pictures and perform other elementary image editing.
Many digital cameras now offer the ability to capture still pictures and video sequences. However, compromises are made between still picture quality and performance when recording video. For example, processing of the video information limits a rate at which consecutive still pictures can be recorded. Furthermore, the video recording is interrupted when the still pictures are captured. In particular, several video frames are typically missed while the camera is processing the still picture instead of processing the video.
The prevalence of video cameras has made it popular to post video and still photos online for others to see. However, there is a technological schism between posting video and photo content online. Photos are more interesting and less time consuming to post and view than video. Currently when a photo is posted online a thumbnail of the photo is displayed. However, for video a box with a “play” button is displayed. Sometimes a thumbnail image is displayed along with the box with the play button. However, there is no convenient way to post video with an automatically-selected still image because still images and video images are stored in different formats. Specifically, still images are generally stored in .jpg format and video is stored in .mp4 or some similar format. To post a video with a still image as a thumbnail, the consumer who posts the video has to find an appropriate still image and post it together with a link to the video.
It is within this context that embodiments of the present invention arise.